San Leandro for Social Justice
(Credit: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection ) I'm one of many community activists here in San Leandro and I just put together this post to help address a lot of questions, confusion, and even frustration or anger people may have regarding the recent push to defund the SLPD, or the police in general. To start with, I hear you. In my city, a slim majority of our elected officials defied the calls from activists to delay the budget vote and review where budget allocations originally marked for SLPD would go. Instead, the mayor and a few city council members felt it was more important to just pass a budget than to do the harder work of revising the budget to help prevent further police violence. If you listen to the meeting (link here ) you can hear for yourself that this decision was solely made by 4 city council (including the mayor) members against the wishes of community members that participated in public comment, wrote letters, and have been advocating for justice against pol